09/24/08

This morning a bunch of us took taxis to The Breeze Hotel which is a few miles away. We were going to go swimming in the morning, have lunch, and then return early that afternoon. When we arrived we found out that there wasn’t any water in their pool, so we hung around and watched CNN until it was lunch time. This was the first time any of us had seen any television since we cannot get any TV stations here and don’t have satellite. It was interesting to see what is going on in the States since we don’t get much news here unless I check on the internet. After I got back I went to the internet café with Emily to check our email since we haven’t had internet here since we lost power last Saturday. We only paid for a half hour of use, but since it was so slow I couldn’t do much other than downloading email.

Later this afternoon I found out that a few people had been working on the small generator again as it had died. They were again trying to salvage parts from the other small generator but after a few hours of work it just wouldn’t run correctly. It did run for a little bit, but couldn’t handle the load it needed to power the refrigerators. Our last resort was an even smaller gasoline generator that someone had donated. It’s really amazing to see all of your resources break down on you one by one and to be able to stretch what you have left with the cooperation of everyone here so we can continue to get by. It’s also a blessing to have so many missionaries who were willing to get their hands dirty and work incredibly long hours (somewhere around 12 – 16 hours) to do whatever was required. Most of us were covered in grease by the time we finished but fortunately we always were able to pump enough water into the water tower in order to shower at the end of each day. There were a few “bucket showers” taken from time to time, but all in all we always had what we needed.